From Kim Ivy's website : http://www.embracethemoon.com/blog
March 02, 2007
Days 41-43: "Leaving the notion of SHOULD: Practicing and Accepting"
For this weekend we welcome Saiko Flack, a fantastic yoga sensei here in town. Saiko practices, teaches and is certified in the Bikram and Power Yoga Methods of yoga as well, is a strong practitioner of Vipassana Meditation. (Watch for her workshop series this summer at our school). I met Saiko last year when she started teaching at the Fremont Bikram studio where I was taking classes. To my delight I learned that she is from Sapporo, Japan, a gorgeous city on the Northern Island of Hokkaido, where I lived for one year in the early ‘90’s. I also had the great fortune of practicing Tai Chi with her mom, who practices in Sapporo, when she came to visit her daughter last summer. Saiko and I have become good friends – though we don’t spend nearly enough time together because we both teach so much! Nevertheless, it is great for me to have her in my life as a friend, teacher and an important example to me of one who truly lives one’s practice. I asked her to share her practice Way for our blog. Thank you Saiko! May the spirit continue.
100 days of practice! What a great idea of meeting ourselves.
In the yoga studios I work for, we occasionally do "30 days challenge", and some people, if their schedule allows, go on to 60 days, 90 days, and so on. My yoga practice, *ideally*, is not stopping at my yoga mat; I want to be living yoga no matter what I am doing in my daily life. So in that sense, we are hopefully doing 365 days of practice, or, life time practice until the day we die.
To me, teaching/practicing/living yoga (or meditation) is my life itself. It’s my awareness and realization. I fall out of practice for a while, and then miss it, and come back, just like life overall. I sometimes go to practice just because of getting out of a guilty conscious; such as "I should practice because I should be better as a teacher" or, " I should practice to get rid of that big meal from last night", or "I should go to yoga to become a calm person". And unfortunately I see lots of practitioners come to yoga with the notion of "SHOULD".
It is not our fault. This society does not support what we do in the yoga room or at a Dojo. We are forced to be "better" each day. We are forced to see ahead, study more than others, plan your vacation way ahead of time, and not stopping once to make more money, to become better shape, so that we can spend more, waste more, and consume more.
However, once we taste a moment of "full-stop" at our practice, we feel the happiness, contentment, and healing. Why? Because we feel acceptance of our being there as exactly who we are. We don't have to keep rushing; we can be aware of ourselves right in this moment, which my teacher calls "sucking the juice out of each moment of our life". How great it is if we can be present, 100% focused, calm, so that we can enjoy life, instead of making plans all the time and all the sudden our life is approaching to an end?
When I was little, each day was forever long. We were so good at "being a moment", because many experiences we encountered back then were very new, fresh, and full of surprises. As we age, our days become routine, predictable, habitual, so we start to make plans for a new experience, such as going on a trip to the place we have never been, so that we can taste the "new" experience. It is the same as inside our heads; we become habitual in terms if thinking patterns. Deepak Chopra is saying almost 90% of our mind is thinking about same thing over and over again.
I lived in Manhattan, NY, for a decade in my 20s to early 30s, and I can definitely tell now that my life would have been ended in the blink of an eye, if I lived like I lived in those 10 years. My days were filled with schedules and appointments, every night meeting with people, stuffed hobbies and schools, making money, money, money.. so that I could pay rent for this gorgeous Madison Avenue apartment which sucked more than half of my paycheck each month out of my paycheck, but hey, I am a New Yorker, life is short anyway, I enjoy my life!! .... Boy, I get goosebumps when I think of my life would have been kept that way forever. Would I have had black hair still? The truth is, no matter how much I tried, I could not fill the hole from outside. I had to find the way to fill the hole from inside so I can get out of vanity and smile from bottom of my heart!
Going back to the subject. So when I see the attitude of "SHOULD" (sometimes in myself) in the students coming into the class, I wonder how I can be helping them to realize the true beauty of practicing yoga or meditation. Actually if you leave the land of should, you can be liberated from the bondage of your own pressure, and become a very happy person. The physical benefits (i.e. looking good) is only the bi-product of true yoga; practicing the same asanas everyday means we try over and over to break our mental habit pattern, so that your practice does not become your routine work; it will become your sanctuary to release, revive, and re-charged. Do not get me wrong; I do like looking good (who does not?), and I honestly started yoga just with the joy of toning up my body. But after a while, my yoga practice took turns to my mental state and that was where my journey became the beauty of never-ending.
Our yoga, tai chi, meditation practice has to be an opposite of stress. Ultimately we have only one goal in our life; Being happy. It does not coming from outside; so no matter how you look beautiful in Standing Bow Pose, or no matter how long you can hold yourself in standing meditation, it does not matter if you are not feeling happy. So why look at other people or compare yourself to yesterday's practice?
Practicing and mastering "starting over again" is the way of life, thus, I keep coming back my yoga mat, and see what happens in my practice. If I allow myself 100% being there and allow everything happening in my body and mind to happen right there, it is pretty amazing place to be. And I say to myself, "How many people on this planet are doing what I am doing right now? I am the state of this planet!!"
When my two hour daily meditation practice was fading away from me, I got irritated and I blamed myself. I felt I was I was weak and not determined enough. Why I cannot keep my meditation? I know it is very good for me but once I start to sit still, I immediately feel sleepy or bored. I was stressed by not being able to sit as I used to. Then my master teacher said to me "You are doing meditation to become happy. So if your practice is slipping away from you, make that fact a part of your own practice. Just watch it. When it comes to time, you will start over again. Until then, just observe yourself.” I cannot tell you how much liberation came to me from his wisdom. Why we put pressure to something we are feeling precious and benefit from? That’s our bad habit!!!
In my 90 minutes yoga class, I strongly encourage students to stay in the room for the entire time, and it is not only for the group energy or because I am a control-freak. I encourage them not to run away from discomfort of being present or meeting themselves. You have made a commitment to enjoy yourself for 90 minutes. So let everything else happening in your life aside, and let's stop becoming "better" all the time. The other day as I watch a gentleman who claims himself "a very busy doctor" stood up and went to the dressing room to make a phone call in the middle of the class session (and that particular person does not even take a final rest after class; he bolts right away), I fell the greatest sympathy towards this man: "If you cannot relax and let go for just 90 minutes and nurture yourself, how can you heal others?"
With that said, hooray for everyone doing this 100 days of practice. You are so fortunate and completely blessed. Please welcome your own body and mind and ... love yourself. Blessing to Kim, who is providing the sanctuary for our practice. I watch her practice (either taichi, qigong, or yoga, meditation) with great admiration and respect. Thank you for being such a great inspiration for all of us! Thanks everyone for reading my humble post!
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Saiko is a Japanese yoga instructor resides in Seattle. She is also a meditator of Vipassana tradition, and slowly wants to include Tai chi and Qigong to her component of her practice. (She is waiting for the right occasion! J) . You can find more about her, her yoga, and where she teaches at http://www.saikoyoga.com.
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